Alphacam | Christopher Tipping

By the way, I chose the worst day of the week to make a site visit to Barton Grange in Lancashire to check on progress – rained all day – the one poor day out of a glorious week of fine weather. Images not as good as they could be.

Notwithstanding that, the progress by Aztec Industrial Roofing Ltd has been brilliant and the main contractors, Truman Design and Build are now focussing on the interiors which are a hive of activity.

Externally, the rainscreen boards are almost all in place – with many exhibiting various stages of weathering, which starts with the exposed routed board being a bright yellow tone and gradually darkening to a rich tan / copper colour.

The Cutting Room in Huntingdon have now almost completed cutting the last of the boards and these will be shipped to site during the next week or so.

Main Entrance Elevation in progress at The Flower Bowl. Image: Christopher Tipping

Installation of cnc routed rainscreen facade in progress at The Flower Bowl. Image: Christopher Tipping

I have been incredibly lucky to collaborate once again with Mark Durey at The Cutting Room in Huntingdon. I worked with Mark on the cnc cut facade for the new Heart of the Campus Building at Sheffield Hallam University Collegiate Campus. I am indebted to him for bringing these projects to life in way I could not deliver on my own. My colleague Sarah Alldritt also deserves a big thanks for her work translating my original artwork into ai vectors. Mark imports these digital files and re-builds the artwork through an Alphacam CAD CAM software programme to create the work. That may seem a straightforward digital process created by clever software …let me tell you that it is not. The translation from my artwork to end product is anything but straightforward in this instance. Mark is the key here. He has a clear understanding of how the programmes work – but – more importantly he is prepared to go ‘off-road’ and put his experience to task, problem solving and bringing an entirely bespoke service into play to produce the outcomes you see. I am lucky to have him as a collaborator.

Mark has an individual methodology at play whilst creating the cutting files. He adds colour to enable him to plan the work and – indirectly, I find these images inspiring and creative in themselves. Probably annoyingly I am always asking for screenshots of particular details.